Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Domesticated Four

There have been a lot of folks who have been asking me what my follow up to "The Guild of Geniuses" would be and now that I've got the ball rolling to a certain degree I thought I'd share with you a graphic novel I'm doing with Arthur A. Levine Books called "The Domesticated Four" (Originally titled 'The Domesticated Six"). This monster project was THE MAIN REASON why I left the game industry. It had been signed on back in 2004 but many factors put this book on hold.

1) My editor was busy putting out two Harry Potter Books.2) My show, "The Replacements" was being pitched and eventually picked up by Disney Channel3) I was still working full time at a video game company4) The birth of my son and the first year of sleepless nights5) My long comittment to Otto Undercover and Walter Kitty6) Various freelance projects

I originally had a draft done back in late 2006 that took ONE FULL YEAR for me to thumbnail out and it ended up becoming 500 pages long. Well, that was too long of a story and they wanted it cut down to 200 pages because of cost and readability. I HAD TO CUT 300 PAGES?!?!? My editor and I have never really done a graphic novel before and so it's been a real learning experience for me. I've been reading up on all sorts of books on how to do comics and after reworking the manuscript I think I've got it working. Well, Harry is over now, and it's full speed ahead for me. Now, it's just a matter of me getting things down on paper and making this thing happen coupled with the huge workload I have working on other projects.

I'll be putting up a production blog in a few days connecting to my site and you can check up on the progress on a regular basis. It'll have all sorts of funny little tidbits about animals and superheroes and so forth and I figure that will also be a motivation for me to get things going.

What's the plot you ask?

All I can tell you is that it's about superhero housepets and sibling rivalry.

What is Doodlevision?

Doodlevision is my daily warm up where I experiment and try things totally different from my own work. All pieces are completed in an hour or less and are mainly used to explore color, design, and maybe some typography. Enjoy!